Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader Podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Hello and welcome to the Life Group Leader Podcast. My name is Kirby Wood and I am the group's pastor here at Mariners Irvine and we are so glad to be having a great conversation with you today about the Life Group Leader discussion.
And with me, I have Esther Chung, our Women's Pastor. Hey guys, good to be with you. We're so glad to have you Esther. We love how you love our women through incredible Mariners women events, as well as all the different Bible studies and courses and things that offer as groups.
And of course, our women's life groups. So if you are a women's leader, know that Esther is your girl and her team of coaches, Life Group coaches, even our new Women's Coordinator, all of us, all the women's team, is here to support you. And that includes me too. So we hope that this conversation today is rich and meaningful as well as Holy Spirit led.
So know that we are praying for you, we have been, and our hope in this time is to prepare you so that you can help facilitate all that God wants to do in and through your group. So with that, our first discussion, our discussion today actually is going to be over week two of Big Paul and Bigger God, which this series I am really liking. What do you think Esther? I absolutely love it.
Love that Eric's book on loneliness and I love that he's addressing fear this week. Yeah, so good. Yeah, so the main topic or line is I am afraid, but God is above, which I think that's such an incredible encouragement. It's not saying I am afraid and God says, you know, like, that he can erase all of our fears or get over it or just get over it, but the encouragement is to look up.
So good. And I'm looking forward to what all that Eric has. So I love that even in the, if you turn to your pages here and you look on 38, there's a little description so you can feel like you have a good sense of where the conversation is going. And I love the question, how do we fight our fears?
And so as we really digest the sermon and digest the scripture, we can really start to think how can we practically apply the start lives. And that's one of our hopes, you know, for life group leader discussions that you as the leader really feel like you're helping your people know how to put this into practice and live out God's work. So good. So as we look at our first question here, we've got lean in, which we love to start a heavy conversation with a light and silly one, hopefully to kind of just get people talking, as you guys know.
But what's the question that we have here today? Esther, what's an animal you would like or you would have for a pet if you knew it wouldn't harm you. So mine would be probably a lion. Yeah.
It's probably a teatless lion. Yeah. It's one in harm. But yeah, no, that's really good.
That's really good. I think I like that idea of something that feels like wrestling or like ampuddly. You know, I've always heard that koala is like really mean. Oh, I know.
They seem so cute, right? I don't know. So something in that vein. But what do you feel like we're really trying to pull out of people here as those we think about like an animal and like the lack of fear?
Like what are you kind of, are you thinking that would inspire these conversations? Yeah, I think I love that we start lighthearted because I also think just to remind all the life group leaders like laughter is actually powerful. Yes. Because laughter is a sign of agreement or a sense of like, oh, you think that too.
Yeah. And even as we go deeper with fear, we're going to be experiencing those like maybe tearful or like agreements from each other, like not each other's head, but just starting lighthearted kind of opens us up to start from place of agreement. And yeah, I totally agree. I so agree.
I love that as we think about how do we help people feel seen in situations is through that agreement. And there's a lot of different ways we agree where we say, I understand, but also like laughing together. Yeah. I love that.
That's so true. I also too think that, you know, if you kind of see the theme here of like an animal that you knew wouldn't harm you. So that's like, it's kind of a, it's kind of saying like what would you do if you didn't have any fears without being too like, too like heavy handed with that question. You know, we're really just trying to help people start to think about the idea of like, what fear might be holding them back from.
Right. So we're already from the very intentional point of this conversation. These are these lean in questions. They're not just completely arbitrary.
Like they are somewhat intentional to hopefully slowly create like a rich conversation as you're thinking about like digging, you kind of dig off the topsoil and you get to the next one. So hopefully we're kind of making some sort of like digs to a deeper, a deeper part of the conversation. As we do look down and we read Exodus together as well as from the gospel of Matthew, we really are challenged as it says, you know, about how we view fear. So it says, what do you learn about the challenge of fear from these passages?
And I love how this question is asked, right? It's not just what do we learn about fear, you know, but we're really thinking, I'm already helping the people of our group see this as a challenge to what we might already or initially like think about fear. What else are you seeing in the passages here, Esther? Yeah, I think it also shows like we kind of see Moses as a hero of the faith and that God, God was using Moses to tell his people to not fear.
I'm sure Moses had plenty of conversations with God where he was fearful. He didn't want to be a leader or maybe some of our life group leaders were hesitant to be a root facilitator for life group leaders. Totally. And so I just love that no one's exempt from fear and that God's encouragement is being life-intrusted.
So good. I love that. I can already hear maybe someone you're grouping like, I'm not afraid of anything. Right?
Right? When you say that, I know that's a lie. And you know, if someone does say that and whenever we're surprised by things that people say, you know, we want to not attack them, right? Like I can already think like, how do you minister to that person?
How do you leave that person and show up and be like, wow, like what's brought you to that place, you know, like, or why do you say that, you know, and in a way that really sounds like loving fear and you're wanting to kind of try to manage that conversation as well to not help feel like the whole group is like about one person's, you know, really thick fear right now. But hopefully some of those things come out if you're not already in a tune to some of the things that people are wrestling with. So as we look over to look out, how do you see people overcome fear and where do you see them overwhelmed with fear? So this is kind of, you know, especially these questions are really helpful in a group where people are having a hard time identifying their own fears.
You know, they're like, oh, I don't really have a lot of fears. Like everything my life's going pretty well and they're not realizing where fear might be motivating them. This is how we can start to call it out in others. Right?
Instead of just, you know, just trying to be an internal like, oh yeah, I already know it's maybe like those who aren't completely aware of some of the ways fear guiding them of their lives. What else do you see here Esther? Yeah, I think that maybe even as people share, like it'll help others articulate their fears. So chase fear is one thing, but being able to articulate like the root of it or putting language to it is another.
So I think, you know, where do you see them overwhelmed with fear or how do you see people overcome fear as we answer? I think that would be a good opportunity to just hear how people process. Yes, absolutely. I love that.
I love reminding everyone that we want to make sure everyone's sharing, especially with such a prevalent issue or a prevalent topic like fear. I think that's easy for some people to think it's so big and weighty that either I have, I'm experiencing it or I'm not, you know, but really let's all be introspective here and think, well, where might fear be motivating me in my life or at least start to call out where they see it in others. So looking in, this is, you know, a pretty clear answer. Where are you overwhelmed with fear?
Boom, got him. Right hit him on the nose. And how would you live differently by trusting in God who overcomes your fear? I love that challenge, right?
To like think about like looking different. Yeah, yeah. Anything else you might call out Esther? I don't really know.
I think if people do have an opportunity to share, I think it would be really awesome if other people kind of affirm like, oh, I think that I would be more vocal if someone said that. Right. That's good. Then like someone can come along and say, hey, when you, you know, you may be more introverted and quiet.
My husband's kind of like that. But when he does speak, he speaks boldly and truth and just maybe even as a life group affirming that at that moment really quickly would be really, really, so to be full of it. So true. So true.
And I love, I mean, we talked about it briefly before we got on here hoping to like get to this really great point about the prayer experience. But like how would you, how would you live differently? Can almost be like a prayer, a way to really begin the prayerful parts of this. Like, you know, where, where could you really envision and imagine your life looking different because you're, you're living in the freedom of fear, you know, or living in freedom from your fears.
So that's our big encouragement for you guys after you're able to kind of get through these conversations and these questions to really plan a time. If you haven't already said a great time to consider when can we do a prayer experience? What was, you did a prayer experience with your, a rooted group, right? Yeah, it was incredible.
I love that. We were just at someone's house, our rooted facility, our house and some people went outside. Yeah. And I think sometimes I mean the rooted one is like so done well for like an hour long.
Yeah. Even if it's like 15 minutes of silence, I think it's so powerful to see here from the learn and to come back and to hear how the Lord spoke to us. And so I think that we shouldn't be afraid of the prayer experience being even like a shorter experience. So true.
It's not straight away from doing it because we think it has to be some magical experience that's to be so long. So true. So true. I really, I totally agree.
Even in my own life group, you know, we've been a life group for a while now, but even in my own life group when we sense the need, we're like, okay, let's just take the last, you know, like you said, like 30 minutes and you know, put on that song and everyone just contemplate and be like, you know, with each other in this house and just listen to what God has to say. I'm not gonna say it's like this. I've never been a spiritual time to hang out on the weekend. You know, but if you really do, I mean, a prayer experience is something that you can do and I would encourage you guys, if you're able to lock down a time outside of your normal rhythm, sometimes really prioritize that even if you said, okay, it'll be in three months from now, that's when we're all available, right, which is so normal in the Orange County rush, but truly like, if you're able to say we're going to set this aside and protected, really in hopes to hear from that in a really unique way, but today we're going to also just for these 15 minutes or just for this, these 30 minutes, we're going to really listen and that will hopefully not only begin to remind us of how God speaks to us, especially specific topic, but also it'll kind of feel us to remember why we prioritize it.
Right? Yeah. So good. Okay, you guys will know that these experiences are these rhythm reminders that we have at each bottom of our discussion is because we want to ensure that your group is staying really rooted in God's word and also rooted in what we like to call biblical community, community that's inspiring one another to be more like Jesus, one that's encouraging each other to be more like Jesus, as well as really iron sharpening iron.
And so we want you guys to feel like you're really getting the most out of this experience. So really try to stay on top of those experiences. If you have any questions, please reach out to your coach. We have some incredible life group coaches that are just like waiting to be utilized and cared and care so much for you.
But we are praying for you, your group's team, your group's pastors, as well as all of your life group coaches are praying for you and we love you so much. So hope you guys have a great week. We will talk to you next week.